Karen Nolan: Let's get real about suicide

It's no secret that Americans have an aversion to dealing with death. We don't like to talk about it, much less plan for our own inevitable demise.

The real taboo, however, is suicide. Only two states -- Oregon and Washington -- allow physician-assisted suicide in specific cases. Similar measures have failed elsewhere, the most recent being the Massachusetts Death with Dignity Act that voters rejected last fall.

There are plenty of sound arguments for opposing suicide. Those who wish to take their own life often are suffering from depression, which, if treated, could lead them to make a different choice. For those with fatal diseases, proper pain management is often a better solution.

There are also moral issues to consider. Most religions frown on, if not outright condemn, the idea of allowing anyone other than God to decide the death question.

But this has left me wondering: How can we claim to be a nation that opposes suicide when we make it far too easy for people to take their own lives?

Yes, I'm talking about guns -- again.

The data is staggering. A Johns Hopkins study on gun violence quotes U.S. Centers for Disease Control figures showing that of the 31,224 gun-related deaths in 2007, more than 55 percent (17,352) were the result of suicide. Homicide, meanwhile, accounted for "only" 12,632.

By 2010, the most recent CDC figures available, the gap was even greater, even though the total number of firearm-related homicides and suicides stayed the same. But where fewer people were being killed by guns (11,078), even more people were turning guns on themselves (19,392).

The thing about using guns to kill yourself is that they are effective. As the Johns Hopkins study reported, of all the people who attempted suicide by gun, 80 percent succeeded in killing themselves. (In comparison, of all the people who were intentionally shot by someone else, 79 percent survived their wounds.)

I am going to go out on a limb and predict that, unless some serious reforms take hold in this country, the number of firearm-related suicides is going to keep growing. Here's why: Statistically, the person most likely to kill himself with a handgun is an older male. With an entire generation of baby boomers reaching retirement age, the number of older men is rising daily.

Here is what seems to me to be the contradiction: If we are OK with gun owners using their weapons to take their own lives, then why don't we just allow doctors to help them do it in a more humane way? And if we aren't OK with suicide, why do we keep insisting that people should be allowed unfettered access to the very tools we know they may use to kill themselves?